1. Jasper E. Hunt with Robin A. Barry, Ph.D.
How Telling is Author Voice? Further Associations Between Personality and Writing
Jasper E. Hunt with Robin A. Barry, Ph.D.
Dept. of Psychology
University of Wyoming

2. A Note on Writing
“The problem of language acquisition is extremely complex. It is difficult to give precise definitions of the concept of ‘language’ and the concept of ‘acquisition’ and the concept of ‘children.’ There is much uncertainty about the interpretation of experimental data and a great deal of controversy surrounding the theories. More research needs to be done.”
- Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century!

3. A Note on Writing
“When we open a cookbook, we completely put aside—and expect the author to put aside—the kind of question that leads to the heart of certain philosophic and religious traditions. Is it possible to talk about cooking? Do eggs really exist? Is food something about which knowledge is possible? Can anyone ever tell us anything true about cooking? … We do not expect the writer to be immobilized by preliminary discussions of whether it is possible to talk about ‘cooking,’ if such a thing even exists.”
- Francis-Noël Thomas & Mark Turner, Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose

4. Why Study Writing? The human condition Scientific interest
How variable are writing tendencies?
What is personality?
Practical interest: anonymity/privacy

5. Where Do We Stand?
“That people differ in the ways they talk and write is hardly a novel observation.” (Pennebaker & King, 1999)
Writing is an individual difference for:
Writing is associated with a variety of personality variables

6. Formal
Informal
vs.

7. The Present Study: Participants/Measures
86 cohabiting couples (82 opposite-sex, 4 same-sex)
Age: M = 23.02, SD = 4.07
Marital Status: Not married (83%), Married (11%), Engaged (6%)
Measures
Relational attachment style (Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000)
Mindfulness (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003)
Ruminative response style (RRS; Treynor, Gonzales, & Nolen- Hoeksema, 2003; Whitmer & Gotlib, 2011)
Self-trust not to commit relational transgressions

8. The Present Study: Procedure
Participants completed personality measures
Participants then wrote about a time when they felt emotionally vulnerable
Knew they would have a conversation about it with their partner
Almost all participants wrote informally (e.g. bullet-point lists)
Writing samples were linguistically analyzed using LIWC software (Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth, 2001)
Correlational analysis was used to determine relationships between writing styles and personality variables

10. Interpretation
People who trust themselves not to commit relational transgressions write less!
Trust to not physically hurt one’s partner explains 15.9% of WC variation
People who brood use more words and a greater variety of words when writing about their vulnerability
Weak effects across the board

11. Discussion (So what?) Even informal writing reflects personality
Language use is an individual difference
Ecological validity
Be careful what you write online!